Who is Darius Khambata? Harvard alumnus exits Tata Trusts, says September 17 events sullied Tata Sons' reputation
Senior advocate Darius Khambata will not seek reappointment as a trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) and Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), CNBC-TV18 reported.
According to a November 2 letter addressed to Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata and CEO Siddharth Sharma, Khambata conveyed his decision not to seek another term. The letter stated he had initially accepted the two positions at the invitation of the late Ratan Tata.
Khambata also expressed strong reservations over the developments of September 17, when the Tata Sons board voted 4-1 to retain N Chandrasekaran as chairman and proceed with the company's listing.
Noel Tata was the sole board member to oppose the decision. Following the vote, Tata Trusts maintained that the resolution approving Chandrasekaran's reappointment was illegal.
Referring to the board's decision, Khambata, as per the report, wrote, “Would the board of Tata Sons have acted as it did on 17 September, had Ratan Tata still been alive? Of course not. But duties are owed to institutions, not to individuals. And as Ratan Tata used to say, the institution is always bigger than the individual.”
He noted that reappointment to the positions requires the unanimous consent of the other trustees. Khambata also acknowledged that his position had occasionally differed from those of fellow trustees, including Noel Tata.
Khambata's term at the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust is due to end on November 9, 2026, while his tenure at the Sir Ratan Tata Trust is also set to conclude this month.
Darius Khambata is a senior advocate and Senior Counsel who practises before the Supreme Court of India, the Bombay High Court and several other High Courts and tribunals across the country, according to Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution (BCDR), a non-profit international dispute-resolution centre and statutory body.
He holds a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from Harvard Law School and has his own chambers in Mumbai. He is also a member of One Essex Court in London.
Khambata served as Maharashtra's Advocate General from 2012 to 2014. Before that, he held the position of Additional Solicitor General of India for three years.
With an extensive legal practice, he has represented clients in several prominent constitutional, corporate and commercial cases, as well as domestic and international commercial arbitration proceedings.
His contributions to the legal profession have earned him several recognitions. He received the Arya Chanakya Puraskar for law in 2014, was named Senior Counsel of the Year by Legal Era in 2017 and received the Living Legend of Law award from the Bar Association of India in 2019.
Khambata has also held leadership and advisory positions in the field of arbitration. He previously served as Vice-President of the London Court of International Arbitration and is currently associated with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the Chamber of Arbitration of the India International Arbitration Centre. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai.
Garvit Bhirani is a journalist based in Gurugram. He is a Deputy Chief Content Producer at LiveMint, where he covers national and international news stories, focusing on accuracy and compelling storytelling for readers. <br><br> With a total of six years of experience in journalism, he has previously worked with Vaco Binary Semantics for Google, taking on the role of news curation lead, and reported from the field on health, education, and agriculture stories for 101reporters and News9. He has also served as a content editor for entertainment and news media organisations. <br><br> Garvit holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and mass communication from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and Gurugram University, respectively. During college days, he joined India’s only non-profit student journalism network, where he anchored daily news updates and produced his own weekly show called ‘Data Fix’. <br><br> He was selected for the YES Foundation Media for Social Change Fellowship in Delhi, the Talking Data to the Fourth Pillar residential workshop, and the VOICE Fellowship in Pune. <br><br> He holds certificates in COVID-19-verification reporting, data journalism, food & agriculture, tech policy, media literacy and countering misinformation, and tackling election disinformation courses from Thomson Foundation, IndiaSpend, The Dialogue, US Mission in India, and AFP. <br><br> He can be reached on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/garvit-bhirani">LinkedIn</a> or on <a href="https://x.com/GarvitBhirani">@garvitbhirani</a> on X
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